


One More Round

by ultragirlvfr750



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, berena has made me lose my mind, first foray into this fandom, fix it fic for Brave New World, for whatever it's worth then, i can't stop thinking of these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 02:19:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7995091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultragirlvfr750/pseuds/ultragirlvfr750
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set directly after Brave New World.  How does Bernie react to Serena's awkwardness - what was it like for her to be on the receiving end of Serena's shame?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Round

Bernie bounded up the stairs two at a time. She needed the physical exertion to match the hammering of her heart as much as she craved putting distance between herself and the woman she’d left behind in their shared consultancy office. A woman who, up until that fateful moment on the floor in theatre, had been her friend. And now, well, now Bernie wasn’t sure of anything anymore. 

She banged through the door to the roof and swallowed a ragged breath of the cold night air. Heading back to her newly rented flat was not an option. At least not yet. Not when the pain of rejection and Serena’s raw embarrassment still felt like an open wound. Bernie hadn’t even begun to start making the austerity of her new accommodations a home and there was nothing amongst her barest of possessions that could provide the kind of solace that the night sky and the dispassionate lights of Holby had on offer. 

She stood at the railing, the metal rough under her hands and stared at the lights. It could almost be considered beautiful if she didn’t look down at the industrial carpark below. The carpark where Serena was most likely flinging herself into the driver’s seat of her now-reliable convertible to get home to the solid routine of Jason, a fish and chips night and the endless barrage of quiz shows. What Bernie wouldn’t do at this moment for the solid routine of barracks, a mess hall and a boxing ring with a couple of wet-behind-the-ears recruits to lay into. Other than her verbal sparring with Serena over the last few months it had been ages since Bernie had been in a ring. In fact this entire cock-up could have been avoided entirely if she’d just had access to a solid heavy bag on which to hammer out her frustrations. 

But more than anything this was what she’d longed for when she was in the desert. Afghanistan had never been short on an array of dizzying lights but there hadn’t been any structures that afforded both safety and height for her to truly get out under the sky. At least Holby afforded her that much.

The taste of shiraz was still on her tongue, as bitter as the smiles she’d forced for Serena’s benefit, sitting across from the brunette, swallowing her words as well as her wine. 

“Berenice Wolfe, you stupid, stupid woman,” she spat the words out, surprised by the tremor in her own voice. 

Because really this was the only inevitable outcome in another of a long string of rash decisions she’d made in her life. Why was she so endlessly capable of assessing risks with a cool head, of wielding a scalpel with utter precision and yet when she came within a whiff of anything to do with her own personal emotions she magically transformed into an immature, brain-dead halfwit?

None of her usual discipline had marked her harebrained decision that previous week, as she had sat slumped next to Serena against the wall of the theatre. She’d been irrational, exhausted and emotionally wrung out. They both had and yet somehow Serena had taken Bernie’s guilt and turned it on its head. Her no nonsense words had elicited the tiniest of smiles from Bernie. No one had ever been able to do that before, not when she was intent on spiralling down the rabbit hole of self flagellation. Something inside her had simply snapped. Before she knew what she was doing she’d chucked out all her hard won self control, leaned over and kissed Serena, her fingers reflexively searching for the soft skin at the base of Serena’s neck. The brunette startled and for a moment Bernie thought she’d tear herself away. But then her eyelids fluttered closed and Bernie felt the other woman’s lips part in tentative acceptance. 

Bernie had reluctantly pulled back, breath caught in her chest. She’d waited for rejection, like an IED, to explode up between them. But Serena’s mouth had claimed hers, open, seeking, her fingers had grabbed at Bernie’s shoulder. She’d dragged her closer and Bernie’s last coherent thought was that Serena kissed like she argued, bold and full of fire. In that moment she finally surrendered. The ledge she’d been trying to talk herself off of, the precipice she’d traversed between friendship and love had dropped out and away, and Bernie was lost.

She shook her head, scrubbed her hand roughly across her face and grimaced at how effortlessly she’d traveled from complete joy to utter desolation. However awful she had imagined the fallout, the reality had been so much worse. 

She hadn’t counted on the depth of Serena’s shame.

From the moment she stepped into the elevator and watched with growing horror as Serena stumbled all over herself, Bernie had felt her elation begin to slip away. As Serena practically jumped at the chance to showcase her regret, a mounting dread had crept into its place.

Amongst Serena’s stammering came the ridiculous admission about kissing some girl in Stepney. In that moment Bernie had been willing to bet Serena had no more kissed a woman in her life than she’d kissed an elephant, but she’d played along in a vain attempt to ease Serena’s obvious distress. 

Yet with dogged optimism she’d held onto a shred of hope that perhaps Serena was only trying to adjust to the obvious emotion of being confronted by something wholly new and unexpected. She had after all returned Bernie’s kiss with a fervour that went far beyond surprised acquiescence, or so Bernie had tried to convince herself as the day wound on and Serena continued to avoid her entirely. 

The final blow came when Serena had cornered her in the hallway, obviously intent on some half -hearted olive branch to put their previous friendship back on firm footing. As she blithely proclaimed that her lack of professionalism had been borne from her preoccupation with wishing herself dead, Bernie’s heart had cramped. For a moment she’d thought she might faint. The world had greyed out and then mercifully swam back into focus. Serena had been too overcome with her own emotions to notice the flush of colour that had bloomed across Bernie’s face. Small mercies, and she’d felt her eyes fill with tears of shame, furious at herself that she’d caused a woman she loved so deeply to feel so bloody awful. 

Here had been the crux of the issue, because there was no more denying her love for Serena. She could no longer ignore this new reality any more than she could pretend she still wished to be married to Marcus, or that she could cobble together a life with Alex. If this new-found clarity had to come at the cost of her own heart she was willing to take that on the chin. What she couldn’t accept was one more moment in an nondescript AAU hallway as Serena awkwardly unravelled. All because of something that Bernie, in her own selfishness, had foisted upon her.  

She’d had her speech prepared in advance and surely things couldn't get any worse. 

But then she’d closed the door behind her and saw, with genuine surprise, that Serena intended for them to share a bottle of wine right there in the office. In an instant she’d realized the woman couldn’t stand to be seen drinking with her in public anymore. At least she’d been able to deliver her little speech with a minimum of fuss and she’d only had to pretend that things between them were fine, that she was fine, for the briefest of moments. 

Silver linings and all that. 

Her heart aching, she’d made her excuses, half her shiraz abandoned in the glass. She’d no longer had the stomach for it. She’d felt Serena’s eyes, hurt and confused, on her as she’d gently closed the door, but Bernie was knackered and all out of solace to offer. She’d needed peace, silence, and the chill of the roof.

The ache in her breast came again and Bernie cleared her throat, willing herself to stare at the sleeping city. She pulled out a battered cigarette packet from her coat pocket. There was only one left and she grimaced as the memory of her first meeting with Serena blew through her. She'd been down to her last cigarette that morning as well, albeit one with much more significance. She’d been utterly disarmed by Serena’s smile and Bernie wondered now if she’d ever had a chance or if she'd been lost from the start. That sodding one last cigarette, the ridiculous symbol of her independence. It was hard won but she had her freedom, as evidenced by the fact that she could smoke as much as she fancied. How ironic then that she was no longer sure she even wanted it. 

What she wanted was the taste of Serena’s mouth and her fingers wound in her hair. 

What she wanted was their soft glances, and impromptu touches, their endless wrangling and shared laughter. 

Serena had become the bulwark against a loneliness Bernie hadn’t even been aware of, and now the one person, the only person who could offer her succour was the one woman she no longer had the right to lean on. 

She let go then and clutched her arms across her stomach, willing her sobs to be silent. Damned if she would give Serena the satisfaction, even in absentia, of making her cry.

“Come on Major, pull up your bootstraps, be the big macho army medic and just light the damn thing,” the sound of Serena’s words in her own mouth only served to make her cry harder but with shaking hands she lit the cigarette anyway and dragged hard.

"Bernie?" the voice came out of nowhere a fraction before the tentative touch on her shoulder. With a violent start she catapulted what felt like a foot in air, the cigarette cartwheeling end over end, the tip flaring for one brief moment against the night sky before pinwheeling into the dark. 

So much for symbols of freedom. Pointless, really.

"Jesus Christ Serena, has no one told you it's bloody bad form to sneak up on a former soldier?"

The brunette took a step back, flinching and Bernie found herself instantly impaled on regret for what felt like the millionth time that day.

"Yes, quite," Serena stammered, "I'm sorry. Shoe on the other foot and all that."

"What? I don't follow."

"Shoes. You know, perhaps it's my turn to wear louder ones," Serena's tone was sheepish.

Bernie smiled then and swiped fiercely at her cheeks, hoping the darkness would hide her tears. Even after the day they'd had the woman could still make her laugh and her heart ached at the unfairness of it all.

"What are you doing here," Bernie turned to look at the smaller woman who was now herself leaning against the railing, twisting her hands together, "and please don't tell me it's for the stunning ambience or because you have a secret passion for running about on rooftops scaring the living daylights out people."

"One could be plagued with worse vices," Serena quipped with a raised eyebrow.

Bernie held her gaze and Serena dropped her eyes first even as she moved closer. She tentatively reached out her hand again as if to place it on Bernie's arm but let it drop at the last moment.

"Actually, I was looking for you," she explained. "I was hoping we could talk. You see, after you bolted out of our office, leaving behind half a glass of a very nice Shiraz I might add, I realized that perhaps you'd rather gotten the wrong end of the stick.......about today," her final words came out in a rush.

Bernie shook her head. 

"There've been a good number of things I've got wrong as of late," she murmured, "but I think I'm getting to grips with it now. After all it's not every day a girl finds out she's been the catalyst for someone wishing themselves out of existence." 

She turned back toward the city and clutched at the metal railing for a second time that evening. 

"Especially not someone she truly cares for.”

Bernie felt rather than heard Serena’s sharp intake of breath, just a slight hitch of her shoulder against Bernie’s and the blonde involuntarily shivered.

“Bernie, there are times,” Serena raked her fingers through her hair, “that I am just a selfish, myopic old woman.”

Bernie snorted.

“I wouldn't go putting yourself out to pasture just yet and hopefully not myopic or we’ll all be checking the sutures of half the patients on AAU.”

“The liver resection is fairly safe,” Serena replied, mirroring Bernie’s attempt at humour.

She sighed and this time she did place her palm over the back of the other woman’s hand. It was warm against Bernie’s frigid skin and she felt her knuckles relax under the gentle pressure. 

Serena continued, choosing her words carefully.  
   
“I’ve always had a flair for hyperbole and dramatics when I’m shaken, and it’s true what I said earlier, Major, you’ve quite shaken me to the core.”  
   
Bernie tried to pull away. The one thing she couldn’t bear was another re-hash of their earlier conversation but Serena deftly laced her fingers through Bernie’s and pulled the other woman round to face her. 

“Please, let me finish. Put this right. You get to my age, our age I suppose, and you rather think you’ve got everything sewn up. All the correct boxes lined up and ticked. Life becomes comfortable, ordered and even if you sometimes long for unpredictability you’re never quite prepared for it when it actually shows up. You’ve introduced a healthy dose of chaos to the comfort Ms. Wolfe and today I’ve honestly been running around like a mad thing trying to bring back the order.”

Bernie closed her eyes and pulled at their joined hands. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I don’t want to terrify you. That’s the last thing I……”

Serena stilled Bernie’s lips with her fingers and the blonde’s eyes widened in shock, as much from the unexpected gesture as from Serena’s hand laid against the sensitive skin of her mouth.

“Of course this is meant to terrify me,” Serena continued relentlessly. “The things that really matter, the best things, always do. They have to terrify us, at least in part. It’s the only thing that makes us grow really. If we’re lucky enough and choose to take them on.” 

Serena ghosted her knuckles across Bernie’s cheek and then cupped her chin in her palm.

“I’ve been so caught up in my own fear that I didn’t even stop to think about how my behaviour might been seen from your perspective, how it must have hurt. Bernie I am sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“Serena you have nothing to be sorry for. I did something terribly unprofessional, without thinking…..” 

Again Serena stopped Bernie from speaking, this time by rubbing her thumb lightly over Bernie’s lips. 

“I was there too, if you remember,” she smiled, “You may have kissed me, but I also kissed you….because I wanted to,” she tipped her head to one side. “I still want to.”

She stood then, on her tiptoes and tentatively pulled Bernie’s face toward hers. There was nothing tentative however, about her kiss and Bernie had the fleeting thought that this time the taste of shiraz was not at all bitter before she surrendered herself to Serena’s mouth. 

If the kiss with their backs against the wall of the theatre was desperate and fumbling this one was no less intense, but it had a languid quality about it that made Bernie’s head spin. Serena nipped at her bottom lip and Bernie felt the flutter of the other woman’s tongue against hers, teasing, tasting. Bernie bit back, gently and she groaned against Serena’s mouth, pulling the brunette closer, shivering as Serena’s fingertips slid under her shirt and brushed against the sensitive skin of her belly. 

It was with real regret that she pulled away. 

Serena let out a small cry and pulled Bernie toward her but the blonde put a steadying hand on Serena’s shoulder.

“I’m thinking we both could use a drink,” Bernie’s voice was ragged as she worked to slow her breathing.

“A bottle of Shiraz then, perhaps at your flat,” Serena countered, as she struggled to regain her own composure. “I’ve been wanting to inspect the spit and polish of your army digs for some time now.”

“Ex-army,” Bernie corrected with a smile, “and steady on Fraulein. Early days. There’s no need to leap from Mills and Boon to 50 Shades in the space of an afternoon.”  
   
Serena’s eyebrows shot up and then she laughed, her face wreathed in the first genuine smile Bernie had seen all day and she felt the knot around her heart slowly begin to loosen.

“Right you are,” even Serena’s voice was lighter, “Albie’s then,” it was more of a statement than a question and Bernie linked her arm through Serena’s as they turned and began to pick their way across the darkened roof toward the door. 

“If I recall, I still owe you a very large drink.”

“Quite,” Serena replied and then pulled on Bernie’s arm, stopping her just shy of pushing through the door into the light of the stairwell beyond. “Only if you promise that we can somehow muddle through…..perhaps…..well, keep this ex-theatre…..as it were?”

By way of an answer Bernie brushed her lips against Serena’s temple. 

  “I think we can both drink to that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on the Title - I have a headcanon that from her military days, Bernie is a boxer. In boxing training "one more round" is always what you do when you think you've finished the last round. It's what you do when you're wrecked and wrung out and you don't think you can fight anymore - that's when you always do one more round. Because when you're fighting sometimes it's not always about the skill involved to beat your opponent - you just have to outlast them. Like Serena says - it's not the dog in the fight it's the fight in the dog. 
> 
> I imagine that the reference works on two levels - that there's at least one more round these two ladies have in them. And of course - there's always one more round of shiraz.


End file.
